Canon law constitutes today one of the areas where the peculiar nature of the Church’s order manifests most clearly—an order in which justice cannot be separated from truth, authority from pastoral responsibility, sanction from correction, and the exercise of authority from the salus animarum, which canon 1752 of the Code of Canon Law places as the supreme law of the Church. During the pontificate of Leo XIV, this perspective takes on particular significance, not because the Roman Pontiff has replaced the penal discipline introduced by Pope Francis, but because his interventions on the administration of ecclesial justice offer a hermeneutical key of particular importance for understanding the meaning of the current canonical sanctioning system. The normative starting point remains Book VI of the Code of Canon Law, profoundly reformed by Francis through the Apostolic Constitution Pascite gregem Dei, in force since December 8, 2021. The reform aimed to overcome a conception of ecclesiastical penal law perceived as poorly applied and restored to canonical sanction a proper legal, ecclesial, reparative, and salvific function. The most significant novelty does not lie, therefore, in the mere multiplication of offenses, but in the maturation of a different awareness of ecclesiastical authority’s responsibility. The pastor is not called only to accompany, admonish, or counsel: when the protection of the community, justice, and the reparation of scandal require it, he is also called to exercise sanctioning power according to the law. The Pascite gregem Dei asserts clearly that the application of penalties can constitute a concrete need of charity and identifies three fundamental purposes in canonical sanctions: the restoration of justice, the amendment of the guilty party, and the reparation of scandal. It is precisely on this ground that Leo XIV’s legal thought appears particularly significant. In his address to the Roman Rota on January 26, 2026, the Pontiff placed at the center of judicial activity the inseparable relationship between truth and justice, recalling the Pauline expression veritatem facientes in caritate. Ecclesiastical justice, according to this perspective, cannot be reduced either to procedural formalism or to a pastoral approach detached from the ascertainment of truth. Leo XIV underscored the risk of a misunderstood compassion that, if separated from the search for objective truth, can compromise the very judicial function. This principle assumes a value that transcends matrimonial matters and affects the entire canonical judicial system, including the penal aspect. In the Church’s penal law, indeed, truth is not merely an accessory element of the proceedings: it constitutes the prerequisite for the legitimacy of the authority’s intervention. There can be no penalty without a crime, nor a crime without a legally configured offense, nor penal responsibility without an adequate ascertainment of the subjective and objective elements required by the order. The reform of Book VI has strengthened precisely this technical dimension, intervening in the determination of penalties, in the prescription, in the right of defense, and in the greater precision of penal offenses, pursuing a more rigorous canonical legality. This results in a fundamental principle: ecclesial mercy is not the antithesis of penal justice, just as penal justice is not the antithesis of mercy. In authentic canonical conception, both contribute to the good of the person and the community. The penalty is not conceived as mere retribution; it possesses a medicinal, corrective, reparative, and, within the limits of ecclesial order, salvific purpose. But precisely because it is an instrument of justice, it cannot be applied arbitrarily. Ecclesiastical authority must act servatis de iure servandis, respecting the law, procedural guarantees, and the dignity of the person subjected to the proceedings. In this perspective, canon law presents itself as authentic law, and not as mere pastoral discipline. The Church possesses its own judicial and sanctioning authority, derived from its divine constitution and ordered towards the protection of the ecclesial good. The exercise of this authority, however, is bound to justice and truth. The canonical judge is not called to produce a solution merely functional to the community’s tranquility, but to legally ascertain what has occurred and to pronounce, where the prerequisites exist, a decision compliant with the law. This is one of the reasons why Leo XIV’s legal magisterium appears particularly interesting for contemporary canonical penological reflection. In his speech to participants in the legal-pastoral training course of the Roman Rota on November 21, 2025, the Pontiff insisted on the harmony between ecclesiological, legal, and pastoral dimensions, implicitly rejecting the opposition suggesting that greater pastoral attention should necessarily entail less legal rigor. Applied to canon law, this principle leads to a significant consequence: pastoral care does not replace law, and law does not exclude pastoral care. The true task of ecclesiastical authority consists in realizing one through the other, while being aware that even the observance of legal guarantees represents a form of respect for the dignity of the person and ecclesial communion. The contemporary canonical penal system must therefore be read according to a logic of responsibility. Responsibility of the author of the crime, firstly, but also the responsibility of the authority called to ascertain it and, when necessary, to sanction it. The failure to apply penal law when it is concretely necessary can indeed transform into a form of injustice towards the community, the victims, and even the author of the crime itself, who is deprived of the opportunity to legally face the consequences of his behavior. In this matter, the norms of Book VI related to imputability, circumstances that can modify responsibility, the penalties ferendae sententiae and latae sententiae, the different categories of crimes, and the competences of the Ordinary and the judge take on particular importance. Technical precision thus becomes a necessity not only academic but ecclesiastical. A penal system is credible to the extent that it ensures the predictability of the norm, the proportionality of the sanction, the effectiveness of protection, the right of defense, and reasonable certainty of ascertainment. The Church, precisely because it proclaims the dignity of the person and the centrality of truth, cannot settle for an apparent justice. This principle also applies to the protection of victims. The recent evolution of canonical discipline shows a growing attention to the protection of vulnerable individuals, the prevention of scandal, the accountability of superiors, and the necessity to prevent gravely damaging behaviors towards ecclesial communion from remaining without adequate legal response. The reform of Book VI has inserted and redefined several penal offenses, strengthening the capacity of the order to respond to particularly serious conduct. Even subsequent technical modifications have confirmed that canon law is not a static reality but a normative system susceptible to gradual adjustment. The Recognitum Librum VI, for example, intervened in 2022 on canon 695 §1 to coordinate the discipline of institutes of consecrated life with the new structure of Book VI. In the Church of Leo XIV, therefore, canonical penal law can be interpreted as one of the privileged places where the legal quality of ecclesial life is concretely verified. It is not enough to proclaim justice: it must be administered. It is not enough to invoke mercy: it must be exercised without transforming it into arbitrariness. It is not enough to protect the institution: it is necessary to protect the truth, the dignity of individuals, and ecclesial communion. And it is not enough to apply a norm: one must understand its ratio in light of the Church’s constitution and salus animarum. The perspective outlined by Leo XIV—truth in justice, justice in charity, law in harmony with the pastoral dimension—thus allows for reading Book VI not as a mere repressive apparatus but as a tool of ecclesial order. Canon law does not have as its ultimate goal the punishment of the individual, but the restoration of an order of justice breached by crime. Within that order simultaneously enter the good of the community, the protection of victims, the amendment of the guilty, the reparation of scandal, and the safeguarding of ecclesial communion. Here one understands the specificity of the Church’s penal law: canonical penalties are authentically legal precisely because they are aimed at a justice that does not exhaust itself in retribution but tends toward the restoration of ecclesial order and the good of souls. During the pontificate of Leo XIV, this framework appears to find particular resonance in reaffirming the relationship between truth and justice. Ecclesiastical justice, in fact, cannot be a blind application of norms or compassion devoid of legal basis. It must be, to use the perspective proposed by the Pontiff to the Roman Rota, truth realized in charity. And it is precisely in this synthesis that contemporary canon law finds its highest justification: not severity for its own sake, not laxity disguised as mercy, but the authority of the Church exercised according to law, in the search for truth and for the restoration of justice, so that even penal discipline contributes to the Church’s saving mission.
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